Scanning Hydrographic Operational Airborne LIDAR Survey (SHOALS)

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Critical Skills Shortages in MeteorologyAgroclim
atology and Micro-meteorology
Jean L. Steiner USDA Agricultural Research
Service El Reno, OK Mini-Workshop, Office of the
Federal Coordinator for Meteorological Services
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Objectives

• Importance of Agroclimatology and
  Micrometeorology in advancing climate services
• Critical skills needed within the agricultural
  research community
• Current and projected skill shortages
• Addressing skill shortages
• Impact on weather and climate services
• Recommendations

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Agricultural Research Service

• Over 100 locations nationwide
• Natural resource locations intentionally
  distributed in key agro-ecological regions
• Coordination across locations within Office of
  National Programs and 8 Area Offices
• A great deal of autonomy given to Research
  Leaders and Laboratory Directors at locations
  regarding skills needed, recruitment, and staff
  development

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ARS National Programs dependent on climatology/
micrometeorology skills

• Climate Change, Soils and Emissions
• Water Resources
• Manure and Byproduct Utilization
• Rangeland, Pasture, and Forages
• Integrated Pest Management

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Agroclimatology Micrometeorology Research Areas

• Adaptation to climate change
• Mitigating GHG emissions from agriculture
• Drought planning and mitigation
• Decision support for agriculture and natural
  resource management
• Environmental services and markets (e.g.
  C-credits, water quality trading)
• Monitoring technologies for environmental markets
  and mitigation programs
• Enhancing resilience of agriculture and
  landscapes under extreme events

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Critical skills needed within the agricultural
research community

• Scaling (fluxes, mass balance) from field to
  landscape and regional scales
• Developing new measurement methods
• Developing decision support systems for multiple
  objectives, tradeoffs, optimization
• Systems research skills

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Land Use
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Pressures on Water Resources
Beyond the need to collect new data, existing
long-term records must be archived and preserved
carefully, and observations must be continued
indefinitely at sites with long high- quality
records, so that patterns of temporal
variability, including long-term low-frequency
fluctuations, can be identified and studied. .
A Plan for a New Science Initiative on the Global
Water Cycle. Hornberger et al., 2001.
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Critical skills needed within the agricultural
research community

• Data system design and management
• Data mining of historical data sets

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Interactive Communication Spaces
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Self-selection into communities of interest
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Open Information Age
Open access movement
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Open Government/Open Information

• OMB Circular A-130 directed federal agencies to
  take initiative to disseminate information,
  maximize usefulness of information, and assist
  public in locating information. 1996.
• GAO Report 04-382. Watershed Management Better
  Coordination of Data collection Efforts Needed to
  Support Key Decisions. 1998.
• Federal Geographic Data Committee
  FGDC-STD-001-1988 established standards for
  geospatial data publication

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Skill shortages

• Remote sensing, GIS, modeling
• Micrometeorology
• Instrumentation development
• Data assimilation into models
• Communication, team skills
• Conducting and managing systems research
• Working and managing research in networked world

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Programs to address skill shortages

• Technical
• ARS Administrators Research Associate Program
• Internships, graduate student training
• Visiting scientists
• Research leadership and management
• OPM management and executive training
• Other management and executive training
• Shadowing
• Special assignments

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Contributions of visiting scientists, research
associates, students

• Bring particular skill or expertise to a problem
  that is not in core staff
• Bring focus to a particular problem
• Leverage capacity of base-program
• As staffing levels decline, capacity is not fully
  utilized at many locations
• Increase visibility and impact of research
• For more remote locations, new perspectives and
  approaches brought to team

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Impact of skill gaps in agroclimatology
micrometeorology on climate services

• Lack of quantitative rigor in projections
• Poor connection of decision support research to
  decision makers
• Lack of quantitative information for
  environmental markets
• Lags in updating basic agroclimate information
  used in planning and outreach e.g. frost free
  periods, probabilities for particular intensity
  storms, seasonality of precipitation change
• Continued reliance on historic climate
  information as though we were in a stationary
  climate

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Normal 813
2005 630
2006 500
2007 1105
2008 789
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On August 19, 2007, Fort Cobb received over 9 of
rain in a few hours. A nearby no-till field
(above) withstood the storm, but the adjacent
field (right) suffered massive erosion down to
the plowpan.
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Recommendations 0 to 2 years

• Improve the process for obtaining security
  clearance for international scholars and students
  coming to work in federal laboratories
• Continue support for networks across agencies,
  such as this skills assessment, NIDIS, USGEO,
  etc.
• Ensure end users are involved in developing
  agricultural and natural resource climate
  products and services

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Recommendations 2 to 5 years

• Mechanism/avenues for peer-reviewed data
  publication
• Peer recognition for data publication/
  contributions open data systems
• Strengthen reward systems to individual
  researchers for large contributions to large
  system projects
• Revisit how we treat basic climate analysis and
  communication i.e., how relevant are 30 year
  normal analyses versus other ways to analyzed
  and present non-stationary long-term data.

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Recommendations 5 years

• Federal support for continued earth observing
  satellites is essential
• Strengthen agroclimatology and micrometeorology
  programs in agricultural and natural resource
  management colleges/universities
• Make training in this discipline more visible
• e. g., programs may be housed in soils,
  geography, engineering, agronomy, or other
  departments and lack a centralized access point
  for students to search out training options